


hues of the deepest skies (would be a compromise)

by unprofessionalbard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, also. i just think jester is a lesbian and thats that on that, art is a form of love letter and thats the real lesson here, real brief mention of sex + a very vague implication but like. way milder than anything in canon tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22933240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unprofessionalbard/pseuds/unprofessionalbard
Summary: Jester has drawn her companions so often she could probably recreate them all with her eyes closed.Well. All of them except one.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 14
Kudos: 231





	hues of the deepest skies (would be a compromise)

Jester has drawn her companions so often she could probably recreate them all with her eyes closed.

Mostly.

* * *

Fjord was the easiest, and probably the most changed, in her sketches. When she’d started out drawing, he’d been a bit idealized, she’ll admit. An archetypal rugged sailor. They were good drawings, but they were not really Fjord. But she’d got it, in the end, fixed the proportions, given him the proper build, made his smile a little crooked.

He looked less like he’d walked out of a chapter of _Tusk Love_. But he looked much more like himself, and now that she knows the shapes, her pen does it on its own. Fjord doesn’t comment, and sometimes pretends to be exasperated, but he doesn’t pretend very hard.

* * *

Caduceus was like writing in cursive. All swirls and curves and soft edges, and sometimes she could get through an entire drawing without lifting her pen off the page.

And Caduceus was the person who saw her sketches of him the fastest. It’s not that she has any problem sharing her art, because she doesn’t, but that she wants to be sure she has it right before they see it. Just in case. But Caduceus had asked her what she was working on and even though she knew it would be a long while before it was _finished_ finished, he came through well enough that she’d showed him anyway.

He’d given her one of those slow grins, saying, “Thank you. That’s a lovely drawing.”

“It’s not even done yet. Maybe it will be really ugly when I finish.”

“I doubt that,” said Caduceus, “Unless you were _trying_ to make it ugly. Then it might be ugly.”

“I would not do that to you Caduceus, that would be mean.”

“Then it will be a lovely drawing.”

* * *

When she drew Caleb, he was all angles. Sometimes in the way someone is all angles when they elbow you in the stomach, but sometimes in the way certain arcane runes were. Caleb was made of patterns, lines and shapes repeating over and over again. Except his smile, which Jester drew twice as often as she saw, as if she hoped to compel him to smile more. That was curved, just slightly, but even that was enough to make it stick out among the rest of the drawing.

“Look, Caleb,” she said one of the later times she drew him, putting her sketchbook on the table in front of him (overtop of his own books).

“Jester, I’m trying to—”

“Just look for one minute and I will let you be boring again.” Jester chose to ignore Caleb’s long suffering sigh, and instead pointed into her sketchbook. “That’s you.”

Caleb squinted at it. “Am I wearing a party hat?”

“Yes.”

“An interesting artistic liberty.” Caleb gave a wry smile and Jester withdrew the book. “Was that all?”

“Yep!” Jester tucked her book away in her bag. “To be honest with you, I just wanted to see if I could get you to smile. Sometimes I get worried you forget how.” Caleb’s smile turned a little sour, but before he could respond, Jester added, “Good thing we are all around to remind you, huh?”

Caleb only gave a hum in response, but that was good enough for Jester, so she left Caleb to his studies.

* * *

Yasha took the longest to draw. It was her eyes, mostly, that Jester spent time on. Yasha’s eyes in real life were kind, and Jester wanted to match that, even when drawing-Yasha was otherwise stone faced. And she had taken to drawing everyone with flowers in their hair, because it was fun and it looked pretty, but Yasha the most. Every flower she could think of, and when she ran out she asked Yasha if there were more, and when she ran out of that she made some up. Pages with Yasha on them were flower-covered.

Yasha didn’t say anything when she saw, but she gave Jester a soft smile, and that was enough for Jester.

(Jester drew Molly, too, less often, but always covered in flowers. When Yasha saw those ones, she did speak, although only to say, “He’d have liked that.” The same soft smile, but a little sadder this time.)

* * *

Nott was the most fun to draw. Her drawings of Nott always had so much energy and motion they seemed to leap off the paper, and when she turned the pages it looked like Nott’s grin got bigger and sharper.

“You make me look nice,” Nott had told her once.

“You do look nice,” replied Jester. Nott sniffed, like she disagreed, but when Jester looked over, Nott was smiling, so she drew a flower in drawing-Nott’s hair and declared that a win.

* * *

And Beau—

Beau.

Beau causes problems for her.

She doesn’t know why drawing Beau is so hard. It never looks right. Never. She can— has, and probably will— work on a drawing of Beau for _hours._ Sometimes it even looks okay on the page. And then she catches a glimpse of Beau and the flaws in her book coming jumping out. The curve of drawing-Beau’s biceps isn’t graceful enough, or her face reflects the light wrong. She can’t pin down the way Beau scrunches up her nose when she’s thinking, the way she holds herself when she’s gearing up for a fight. When she looks at real-Beau, drawing-Beau looks clumsy and disjointed. 

Beau has never seen any of Jester’s drawings of her.  Nobody has (well, the Traveller has, but that was different). 

A lot of her sketchbook is filled with attempts at Beau. It’s so much, she knows, but she has to keep trying. It feels important that she gets it, that she does Beau justice.

She sits under the shade of a large tree, hunched over her sketchbook, engrossed in the memory of Beau laughing at breakfast this morning. So engrossed that she doesn’t notice footsteps approaching until Beau speaks up behind her.

“What’cha drawing?”

Jester slams her book shut, knowing her fingers have smeared the ink across the page, and any hope she had of making the picture even close to the real thing is dashed. Again.

“Nothing!”

Beau stares at her for a moment and she can feel her face flush.

“Uh, okay,” says Beau, “Don’t tell me.”

“Sorry,” says Jester, “I’m just— it’s not finished yet, you know? And it’s a really hard drawing and I’ve been trying so long to get it right and it’s so _annoying_ because I am usually pretty good at drawing especially if I’ve been trying for a long time but it’s just— ugh!” She lets herself fall backwards, barely missing the tree trunk, and staring up at the sunlight streaming in through the leaves.

“That bad, huh?”

Jester groans and puts her sketchbook over her face, open to the page she was just drawing on. “I just... I have seen what I’m trying to draw a lot. I don’t know what the problem is.”

There’s a pause, and Jester can hear Beau shuffle her feet. “Is it a dick?”

“No,” admonishes Jester, voice muffled by the book. “My dick drawing skills are perfect.”

“Just checking.”

Jester can hear Beau smiling. And that’s not even fair. How is she supposed to capture that on a page? That’s not even a visual.

“Can I sit down?”

Jester pulls the sketchbook from her face and heaves herself back up to a sitting position. “Yeah,” she says, followed by, “How come you’re out here anyway?”

“Doing some reading.”

“You hate reading.”

“Using reading to out of talking to people,” elaborates Beau, and that sounds more like her.

“You’re talking to _me_.” 

“My tolerance for talking to other people is like, here,” Beau puts a hand around her chest level, “But my tolerance for talking to you is like, here,” Beau raises her hand to be a bit over her head. She looks nonchalant, but as Jester registers that and smiles at her, her brow starts furrowing. “If you’d rather be left alone I can—”

“No,” says Jester, “Sit with me. And thank you Beau, I like talking to you too.” Beau’s company is always appreciated, and maybe with her subject actually sitting there, she’ll be able to produce something that holds a candle to the real thing. Two birds, one stone and all that. “I don’t think I’ll be good conversation, though. I’m going to work on this. So I might be a bit boring, but maybe I can draw and you can read and we can just, you know, hang out together.”

She 100% knows Beau won’t call her boring and she 99% knows Beau will say yes, but her heart skips a beat anyway.

“Sure, Jester,” says Beau, pulling out her book, and Jester smiles, positioning herself so her back is leaned against the tree and opening her sketchbook again. It’s angled so Beau can’t see it, but Beau doesn’t pry, so Jester flips a page and tries again.

And Beau doesn’t know she’s drawing her, so Jester can’t exactly stare. So she keeps her head down and lets some of her hair fall in her face and looks at Beau through that.

Beau settles into her reading, which for her, consists of looking bored for three to five pages, suddenly mouthing _‘what’_ , and then flipping back several pages, presumably to catch herself up on what she’d zoned out on. Jester lets her eyes follow the lines of Beau’s shoulders, the tilt of her head, in an attempt to turn them into lines she can draw. 

Beau mouths the words to herself sometimes, a movement so small it’s almost imperceptible, but Jester catches it, the slightly heavier or lighter breaths. Her gaze lingers on Beau’s mouth, and she thinks that Beau is really beautiful, which is a thought she’s had many times before, but sometimes, like now, it comes with something heavy in her chest that she doesn’t have the words to identify.

All her friends are beautiful. She means that when she says it. But sometimes Beau is a different kind of beautiful. It could be that she’s just hot. But that’s not just Beau then. Because Yasha is  _also_ hot.

And  Fjord is hot, she _supposes_ , but also not like Beau or Yasha. 

No, Beau is... Beau takes her breath away sometimes.

“Do I have something on my face?”

Beau’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts and she blinks. “Hmm?”

“You’re staring at me.”

“Oh.” Jester laughs, and it’s maybe a little high and strained, but Beau doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “Zoned out, sorry.”

“Did your drawing go any better this time?”

Jester looks down at her work and frowns. It is pretty much done. And if she held it a little farther away maybe she would say it looked good. But then she looks back at Beau and sees the sunlight reflecting off her face, the slight tilt to her neck, the way her eyes seem to almost shift in colour...

“No. It still sucks.”

“If you want, you can show me? I don’t know much at all about art but maybe that will help. Sometimes people who don’t know shit will point out the obvious, y’know?”

Jester deliberates.

“If I do that, do you promise not to make fun of me?”

Beau looks like she’s about to make a sarcastic comment, but she must see something on Jester’s face because she stops herself. “I promise.”

Jester goes back to deliberating, and then sighs, turning the book around so Beau can see it. She can’t even bring herself to look until Beau speaks up.

“That’s... me?” Beau is staring at the paper, wide-eyed, a note in her voice Jester can’t name.

“Well, it’s supposed to be,” says Jester, “But I got your eyes all wrong, _again_.”

“What are you talking about?” Beau tears her eyes from the drawing. “Jester, this is amazing.”

Jester frowns at the paper. “I mean it’s pretty okay I guess but like the colours are all wrong and the proportions aren’t right like it doesn’t do you justice, you know?” She looks up at Beau, who still has that wide-eyed expression. “I mean. I just mean like, uhm, even when the drawing looks good it’s still not as good as— you know, I just don’t think the eyes are the right colour. In the drawing.” The heat rises to Jester’s cheeks. Beau probably thinks she’s super embarrassing.

“The eyes?” echoes Beau, seemingly not quite able to pull together a full response to that.

“You know what, I’ll just get back to the drawing board and I’ll show you when I figure it out, okay?” Jester grabs the book back from Beau, who lets it be pulled away from her. For a tense moment they sit in silence, Jester’s face slowly getting warmer.

“Uh,” starts Beau, “Obviously it’s your art so I’m not— I don’t know shit about art, but I thought it was beautiful. I meant it when I said it was amazing. I dunno how you could possibly make this a more flattering depiction of me.”

And regardless of her previous uninterpretable expression, she sounds like she means it, so Jester ventures a small smile.

* * *

Sometimes, Jester draws herself. Not often, because when she draws it’s meant to be her perspective. But sometimes she does, to indulge herself a bit. Draws herself getting swept off her feet by some mystery man, of kisses in the rain and a billion other romantic scenes. The mystery man is undetailed, because Jester doesn’t know what he looks like yet, because it’s a mystery.

But he has a rugged jawline, and a handsome face, and lots of muscles, and perfect teeth and he is taller than Jester, probably, and when they look at each other there are fireworks in the background and orchestral music and it’s love at first sight and then—

And then—

Well, Jester doesn’t think about the _and then_ , because it’s obvious. They get married, and they have really good sex, and then— 

It made sense that she couldn’t imagine anything after that. He wasn’t a real person, after all. When she met him for real, she would know. She’d be able to picture a life together. That was just how these things worked. Or that was how Jester assumed they did, anyway. She’d never asked, because what would she even ask?

_Hey everybody, do you sometimes feel that when you imagine falling in love there’s some kind of depth missing and you’re not sure what it is_ _and you think to yourself ‘it’s probably because you’re young’ but you don’t actually think it’s because you’re young but if it’s not that then what is it?_

That would be silly.

Jester stares down at her sketchbook of her and her nondescript handsome love interest and frowns. It looks wooden, and fake. She tears the page out and crumples it up, before starting on a new one, a different one. Just the seven of them, together. It takes her awhile, but when she’s finished she inspects her handiwork.

(Drawing-Beau still doesn’t look right, but she looks better than the other times. Jester has drawn her with an arm around drawing-Jester’s waist, and she’s not sure when or why she decided on that. She’s laughing, and drawing-Jester is laughing, and if the two of them are a teensy bit more detailed than the rest of the art, only real-Jester sees it.)

* * *

“Beau! Beau come here!”

Beau looks over at her from her side of the room, pushing herself off the bed and heading towards where Jester is sat on the floor, paints and papers and inks spread out around her.

“Yeah?”

“Sit down, I need to see something.”

Beau sits down (rather gingerly, to avoid sitting on any errant art supplies) as Jester swatches a newly mixed paint onto a torn out scrap of paper.

“What are you seeing?”

“Shush.” Jester holds the paper up so it’s next to Beau’s face, darting between the paint splotch and Beau’s eyes. It’s close, so close, but then Jester moves her face closer and Beau’s eyes shine brighter and the paper remains dull.

“What are you seeing?” repeats Beau, this time in a stage whisper.

“I am trying to see if this matches your eyes,” explains Jester, and then gives a frustrated sigh. “It doesn’t, though.”

“What—?” Beau turns her head a bit too fast and smears her face on the still-drying paint, leaving a streak of it across her face. “—Oh, shit—”

“Sorry! Sorry—”

“—is it close to my eye?”

“Don’t touch— I’ll get it for you.” Jester scrambles around for a second trying to track down a rag, grabbing one and carefully starting to wipe the paint off Beau’s face. It only takes a few seconds, and then Jester throws the rag back over her shoulder. “Well,” she says, “Now I definitely know that doesn’t match your eyes, although that was a closer comparison than I was looking for.”

Beau laughs.

And the thing is, there aren’t any fireworks. And there’s no rain. And there’s no swelling orchestral music, and Jester doesn’t swoon and she doesn’t have a big long monologue to say or anything like that. There’s just Beau, and her, and the paint that is almost but not quite Beau’s eyes.

But for just a second, just after she thinks about how good Beau looks, she imagines leaning across the foot or so gap between them and kissing her.

It’s like a dam breaks in her head, because then she is imagining holding Beau’s hand and she is imagining Beau’s laugh in the morning, she is imaging her and Beau in a thousand different futures and it is so _easy_ , and, and, and—

And she has been so _stupid_ because Beau’s been in front of her the entire time. Jester’s been searching for her standardized fairytale ending without even ever asking herself if she actually _wants_ that ending. If she might want something else.

“Jester, you still in there?” Beau is joking, but there’s a note of concern in her voice.

“Yeah,” says Jester, low and soft, like someone is listening, or like talking too loud will break something, “I’m in here.”

“Are... you okay?”

“Yeah. I— I just noticed something I should have noticed _ages_ ago.”

Beau’s eyes widen, then her gaze drops to the ground.

And Beau— and of course, she doesn’t _know,_ can’t know what Beau is feeling but she _knows_ Beau cares for her and likes her and when she looks at Jester she makes Jester feel _seen_ and sometimes—

The people in her novels Just Know what the other person is thinking and feeling. They act like they can read each others minds, always knowing what they want, what the right things to do are. But while Jester is pretty intuitive, she cannot read minds, so she’ll just have to say something out loud and hope.

“I have a question for you, Beau.” She almost, almost warns Beau that it’s a maybe dangerous question, that maybe it is too much and maybe it will make things weird, but she stops herself. Whatever the answer is, they’ll be able to deal with it.

“Shoot,” says Beau.

“Can I kiss you?”

“—What?”

Shock is written all over Beau’s face and Jester feels her stomach drop.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to like I don’t want to make you uncomfortable but I was just thinking about it and I realized that uhm, maybe I have had a secret crush on you for a very long time but I think it was a secret even from me until, uhm, pretty much right now and I just thought, you know, I might...”

Half-way through Jester’s ramble, Beau gets her bearings back, placing a hand on Jester’s cheek, and Jester trails off too focused on Beau to try to continue any explanation.

“Jester.”

“Yes?”

“I would love it if you kissed me.”

So Jester does.

* * *

When Jester draws Beau, it doesn’t come out like the real thing, not by a long shot. Jester draws her anyway, draws her lounging on a chair, feet kicked up over the side, draws her in conversation with Caleb, draws her sharing a joke with Fjord. Draws her smiling and frowning and snarling and smirking, draws her sitting stock-still as she meditates or in constant motion as she practices swings. It’s not about the drawing, she decides, it’s about the action. She doesn’t need to record Beau down on paper, she just needs a note to herself— _Do you remember what Beau looked like while she laughed at your joke? Here is a hint. Fill in the gaps yourself._

( And then sometimes, it’s just about a different kind of drawing. The way she draws Beau in with a smile, the way she draws her hands up Beau’s sides—

She does a lot of that kind of drawing too, but it goes unrecorded. After all, it could never possibly compare to the real thing.)

**Author's Note:**

> title from [crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIpHojkgR90) which is also the song that possessed me to write this fic in almost one sitting. 
> 
> any discrepancies can probably be blamed on the fact that i'm only on ep 52 but i'm hoping i've kept up with enough spoilers that you couldn't tell based just on this. anyway beaujester real & lesbian jester real in my heart and implied in my fic. 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr [@charlataned](https://charlataned.tumblr.com/) or on twitter [@elftwink](https://twitter.com/elftwink) if that's more your jam!


End file.
